Plex introduces new cloud based server: Plex Cloud

[rcarteraz]

Plex just announced their newest service available to Plex Pass Subscribers, cloud based Plex Cloud through a partnership with Amazon Drive.

 

Source: https://www.plex.tv/blog/book-plex-volume-3-plex-cloud/

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/26/13056216/plex-cloud-means-saying-goodbye-to-the-always-on-pc

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/26/plex-partners-with-amazon-to-launch-a-hardware-free-media-server-plex-cloud/

 

Plex Cloud will function just like a normal Plex Server, albeit minus a few functions at launch, however entirely in the cloud.

 

Quote

Plex Cloud functions just like a regular Plex Media Server giving you access to your media — no matter how you acquire it — from an incredibly broad range of devices. Most, but not all Plex features are available in today's beta. Some of the missing capabilities include Camera Upload and Offline Sync, though those will come in the future. Other features missing in Plex Cloud include DLNA support, Cloud Sync, Media Optimizer, and the newly launched Plex DVR.

The service is beta invite-only to start. You can sign-up here: Plex Cloud

 

This is an interesting concept. It removes the need to have an always-on PC that's powerful enough to stream your media as well as store it all. Honestly though, that's a big drawback to for a majority of users who have MASSIVE media collections. I don't have anything near as crazy as I've seen but I still have 5TB of media. The idea of uploading all that into the cloud doesn't sound pleasing either. The amount of time that would take on my 5mbps upload limit would make it not worth it at all.

 

Plex Cloud in a nutshell as stated by Plex themselves:

Quote

• Plex in 60 Seconds: Plex Cloud eliminates the need to run your own local Plex Media Server and manage an always-on computer or NAS. With the simplified setup and no hardware or network challenges, you’ll be streaming quicker than ever!
• Storage with Peace of Mind: Let Amazon worry about nasty stuff like power failure, corruption, and data loss. It turns out they’re pretty good at that stuff!
• Unlimited Storage, Radical Performance: Add as many files as you like to your unlimited Amazon Drive² and stream anywhere! Forget about your glacial home upload bandwidth and give your data cap some room to breathe. Plex Apps let you quickly view, organize, and share things when you need to, no matter where you are.
• Hang on to your $$$’s: No more costly hardware to buy and maintain! You can store and play as much as you want for just a few bucks a month!³

 

[ThinkWithPortals]

And the award for the most unimaginative product name goes to... Plex's Cloud Service, Plex Cloud!

[rcarteraz]

Just now, ThinkWithPortals said:

And the award for the most unimaginative product name goes to... Plex's Cloud Service, Plex Cloud!

Very true but really what else could it be? lol

[Guest]

1 minute ago, rcarteraz said:

Very true but really what else could it be? lol

AirPlex

[jaggysnake57]

yeah i dont get it personally

plex is a rip off considering the features you get with kodi and the systems you can run on. i have plex at the min because it runs on my ps3 i will get an amazon fire tv soon and get rid of plex all together

[qwertywarrior]

how about u guys first get hardware acceleration working first

[rcarteraz]

5 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

yeah i dont get it personally

plex is a rip off considering the features you get with kodi and the systems you can run on. i have plex at the min because it runs on my ps3 i will get an amazon fire tv soon and get rid of plex all together

I personally use Emby and then run Kodi with the Emby for Kodi addon, on my Amazon FireTV. I do have Plex though so that my brother can use it on his PS4. He pays for the $5 monthly Plex Pass.

[OPSJono]

34 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

And the award for the most unimaginative product name goes to... Plex's Cloud Service, Plex Cloud!

You're forgetting about the Razer Blade (year)!

[ThreePinkApples]

But can it be done as a pure stream, so no encoding, just pure passthrough?

Because then, I would be extremely interested. 
Right know I run Kodi on my PC and then I just backup my media to Jottacloud, but if I could do two in one, with the same quality, I'd love that. 

[79wjd]

As someone who uses Plex and has it running on my own FreeNAS server I'm not super interested, but $60/year is a pretty good deal honestly. It costs about $120~ year just for electricity to run my server. So I can see this being a great option for a lot of people (especially those who don't want to deal with the hassle of running a server of their own/managing it). 

 

I do wonder if there are any.....legal issues with this though (since a lot of the content that will be pushed through Amazon servers will likely be pirated content).

[zMeul]

the "cloud" does not exist 

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, aerandir92 said:

But can it be done as a pure stream, so no encoding, just pure passthrough?

Because then, I would be extremely interested. 
Right know I run Kodi on my PC and then I just backup my media to Jottacloud, but if I could do two in one, with the same quality, I'd love that. 

 

1 hour ago, rcarteraz said:

I personally use Emby and then run Kodi with the Emby for Kodi addon, on my Amazon FireTV. I do have Plex though so that my brother can use it on his PS4. He pays for the $5 monthly Plex Pass.

 

For those of you that do or don't run Kodi instead of Plex, do you guys know how well Kodi runs non-locally, and in particular does Kodi allow for direct streaming of HVEC media? Because that is the most important missing feature I see with Plex (for Windows anyways, and for some ungodly reason it doesn't support direct stream of the .mkv format).

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, djdwosk97 said:

As someone who uses Plex and has it running on my own FreeNAS server I'm not super interested, but $60/year is a pretty good deal honestly. It costs about $120~ year just for electricity to run my server. So I can see this being a great option for a lot of people (especially those who don't want to deal with the hassle of running a server of their own/managing it). 

 

I do wonder if there are any.....legal issues with this though (since a lot of the content that will be pushed through Amazon servers will likely be pirated content).

Hmm I think mine consumes about 40W so that is about 50 dollars a year in electricity. About a wash then

[The Benjamins]

13 minutes ago, zMeul said:

the "cloud" does not exist 

what do you mean?

[zMeul]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

what do you mean?

"the could" is just the hipster way of saying server

[79wjd]

24 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Hmm I think mine consumes about 40W so that is about 50 dollars a year in electricity. About a wash then

Have you measured the power consumption of your system? Because I'd assume it's more like: 20w for the CPU + 10w per drive (my Reds supposedly idle at 8w~)+ 10w for other system components -> 70w~ 

 

I've estimated my (idle) power usage to be about: 

35w for the CPU + 10w per drive + 8w for system (ram, motherboard, etc...)-> 80w~ (80*.13/1000*24*365*.13/.85) = $110~.

[Curufinwe_wins]

55 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Have you measured the power consumption of your system? Because I'd assume it's more like: 20w for the CPU + 10w per drive (my Reds supposedly idle at 8w~)+ 10w for other system components -> 70w~ 

 

I've estimated my (idle) power usage to be about: 

35w for the CPU + 10w per drive + 8w for system (ram, motherboard, etc...)-> 80w~ (80*.13/1000*24*365*.13/.85) = $110~.

I've seen supposed measurements of extremely similar nas systems to mine. Since the c2550d4l is super common.

[ThreePinkApples]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

 

 

For those of you that do or don't run Kodi instead of Plex, do you guys know how well Kodi runs non-locally, and in particular does Kodi allow for direct streaming of HVEC media? Because that is the most important missing feature I see with Plex (for Windows anyways, and for some ungodly reason it doesn't support direct stream of the .mkv format).

Kodi runs very well locally, no problem with that. But for HEVC you should naturally have hardwere support for it, or else it will be heavy. 
But I'm not sure if I understand your usecase? As far as I know, Kodi is basically just a videoplayer, no encoding/streaming. But I could be completely, wrong, as I have no interest in such features
All I need is a good way to browse my library and play my files. I don't buy Blu-rays for a program to compress them during playback. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

3 minutes ago, aerandir92 said:

Kodi runs very well locally, no problem with that. But for HEVC you should naturally have hardwere support for it, or else it will be heavy. 
But I'm not sure if I understand your usecase? As far as I know, Kodi is basically just a videoplayer, no encoding/streaming. But I could be completely, wrong, as I have no interest in such features
All I need is a good way to browse my library and play my files. I don't buy Blu-rays for a program to compress them during playback. 

I do local and non-local file playback. Thus for non-local playback I need Plex (or whatever I use) to down encode the stream if I need to use it at a place with slower internet (and generally my upload speed is only 6Mbps which is much lower quality than 1080p GOOD h.264 and pretty standard 1080p good HEVC).

 

Ehh if it is just a videoplayer then I literally have no use for it. My physical PCs run a mapped network drive to the files (which are already highly organized), and I mainly use Plex to cast/ play on mobiles/ or just to see the meta data on movies (more applicable when choosing one to watch with friends.)

 

The whole idea of direct stream then is that IF your destination has the capability of playing HEVC/264 (not that anything really lacks 264), instead of transcoding the file it will merely relay it just like say a mapped network drive (and probably just like what Kodi does then). If it doesn't (which it kinda sucks at identifying that most things also work fine for HEVC decodes) then it transcodes the file into a steam the file does know how to process (h264).

 

The point of using HEVC however instead of Blu-ray or H264 is that at the same quality standards HEVC can consume 1/3-1/4 the bitrate (and thus file size) as H264, and more like 1/10th the file size of blu-ray at indistinguishable detail loss. This is absolutely 100% a gigantic deal for media hoarders like myself (just reached my 500th movie, with almost all being 1080p or better from Blu-ray sources).

[Misanthrope]

Introducing the cloud service Plex Cloud: the cloudiest of all fucking clouds.

[rashdanml]

7 hours ago, zMeul said:

"the could" is just the hipster way of saying server

It's more accurate to call it a large network of servers, not just one server. 

[BuckGup]

INB4 shut down for hosting pirated content MegaShare style.

[zMeul]

4 hours ago, rashdanml said:

It's more accurate to call it a large network of servers, not just one server. 

a server is a server is a server - no matter how large it is

[WereCat]

14 hours ago, rcarteraz said:

Very true but really what else could it be? lol

Plex Cloud RGB

[rcarteraz]

18 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

For those of you that do or don't run Kodi instead of Plex, do you guys know how well Kodi runs non-locally, and in particular does Kodi allow for direct streaming of HVEC media? Because that is the most important missing feature I see with Plex (for Windows anyways, and for some ungodly reason it doesn't support direct stream of the .mkv format).

 

I don't use Kodi to stream. As far as I know, Kodi doesn't have that capability. For non-local users I use mainly Emby (except for my brother who pays for Plex to use with his PS4). Locally, I use Kodi but I'm using a plugin with Emby that feeds my library to Kodi which is installed on my Amazon FireTV (4K version). I prefer Kodi's looks and functionality over Emby. So this setup allows me to use that but still use my Emby Media server which syncs across all my devices.

 

For most of my lower bitrate rips, the non-local users (depending on hardware) are able to direct stream without transcoding. As far as I know, Emby does support HEVC. I would check out their website to get more info though. 

[Wobblysauce]

On 9/27/2016 at 2:04 AM, qwertywarrior said:

how about u guys first get hardware acceleration working first

Eh.. Audio compression would be better, so some devices which are not say 5.1 setups, do no get the whisper whisper boom boom volume swings.

One thing that make VLC my main choice for movies when solo.

 

Plex is setup with the Chromecast's for ease of use/housemates on the other TVs around the house... all controlled by there phones/tablets.

 

Kodi is fine but some find it hard to navigate for some reason.

 

Just using the Standard Free Plex, non of the paid options are of any interest to me.